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Carvers Gap

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  1. Carvers Gap
    Stuff is gonna be blooming if this projected warmth(after the 20th) lasts into January. I have stuff with full buds right now...they just haven't bloomed. Someone had a great quote maybe in the NE forum...Christmas lights and blooming forsythia just don't go together. LOL.
  2. Carvers Gap
    Hand-offs and Miller Bs are a pain. That said, TRI scores with Miller Bs - but I still don't like them. Great post, though. Many great winters weren't exactly cold. They were stormy. I still like our last half of winter chances, but am less confident as some of the features showing up currently(GoA low and WAR) were present during some of the less snowy Nino winters. And it is just December 11th, there is still a lot of ground to cover. I think December, we can take off the board though unless we get a miracle.
  3. Carvers Gap
    I don't think anything in weather is ever a certainty. We "should" see a mean trough over the southeast by mid-late Jan. If so, severe is on hibernation for a while - if/when that trough is in place. I can't speak for the rest of December, though, as we still will likely see some ridging, and that could open the door for trouble/instability. El Nino patterns are actually known for there stability from mid winter into spring. But as we have seen this week, the weather is gonna do what it is gonna do whether it agrees with our opinions or not. However, January tornadoes would be incredibly rare at this latitude, but not impossible. Early December outbreaks are not uncommon I don't "think." AN temps here would likely be 50s to low 60s in January...that would make it tough to seed an outbreak. Where we need to watch is where wavelengths shorten up with a cutter, and allow warm air to surge northward in front of a front. The Gulf of Mexico is what drives our tornado outbreaks. We live in one of the the areas of the world where tornadoes are common, and it is directly related to that. The GOM isn't going anywhere soon, so the potential will always be there. I have been in three bad tornado outbreaks. One was in maybe in July at TRI. Another preceded the blizzard of '93. The third one was during the mid to late 70s in Knoxville as a kid. Oddly, I don't remember a lot of tornado outbreaks during the Nino winters of the 90s during mid-winter.
  4. Carvers Gap
    Christmas through the first week of January(which was originally supposed to be very cold), will now potentially feature well above normal temps in ALL of North America. I suspect modeling is over-doing that, but wow. I do think we cool off by mid January(no place to go but up), but I wouldn't say I am overly confident in saying that. This winter is a typical El Nino analog if extended LR modeling is correct. Unfortunately (and you called it), we are now leaning towards the warm cluster of Nino analogs found during the mid 90s. During the second half of the 90s, I wondered if winter would ever return. We went 2-3 winters (in a row I think) where we had very little snow at all. Thankfully, the 2000s brought back winter. This certainly is behaving like a warm iteration of the Nino pattern. The current structure, which is just blasting the West Coast with maritime air, may be tough to break. By the time we can reset the Pacific, days will be getting longer and cold air will still be lacking in Canada. I am trying to use a little reverse mojo as well by being more pessimistic than normal. I called for a warm November years ago, and it turned out cold. We have rarely tracked a winter in the 2000s where the grass was green all winter......the 90s had more than one of those. Severe weather was very prevalent during some of the 90s winters.
  5. Carvers Gap
    The Euro Weeklies now have a trough in the West to start January. LOL. Cosgrove mentioned a thaw was coming mid-January. Aren't we going to have to go in the freezer first before we have a thaw? LOL. You all know that I like LC...but I did chuckle when I read that. I will say in LC's defense that he has been adamant that this winter would be better than the last, but that winter really wouldn't get going until late January...and I mean adamant.
  6. Carvers Gap
    Tagging onto Holston's great post(post of the year worthy) about the jet extension...the MA has a great discussion this afternoon about the same post. I encourage everyone who isn't a met to read them(Holston's and the MA). That extension originally would have led to a nice -EPO and +PNA. What modeling missed was that it was going to almost hit an extreme level which caused the Aleutian low to become stronger, and it formed a massive GoA low which will cause the chinook. Long story short, modeling is showing a retraction of that jet, and that should allow for a more typical Aleutian low placement/intensity, and consequently by early January, allow for BN heights in the SE(reference Brooklyn's post there...and paraphrased). Some strong posters basically noted it was less of the normal can-kicking and mentioned that there were good reasons for this delay, but that it was only a delay of about a week.
  7. Carvers Gap
    They are definitely on the table if extended LR modeling is even halfway correct. I tend to think we get the "good" El Nino, but can-kicking is usually the first sign that winter is not going as planned. And this recent can-kick was a big one...if indeed it was a can kick. Still wouldn't surprise me to see modeling come back around to a better solution at 500 patterns by just after Christmas. Cold air is still way out there iMO.
  8. Carvers Gap
    For your region, I think Nino climatology works against you during most years. I don't think you will eat crow on this one. The 6-8 week rule is generally a good one. I will probably start the clock on this one when it started raining a couple of weeks ago. So, the second or third week of January should be a shake-up to that run. Now, if the November rule is in play this winter...the shake-up could very well lead to an even warmer pattern during the second half of winter. Let's hope 2000s Nino climatology wins out, and we see winter during the second half. Those terrible Nino winters of the 90s had many mowing their yards by late January or earlier.
  9. Carvers Gap
    In middle and west TN, your winters have been much different than ours in TRI during the past three years as La Nina winters are better for you all. Normally, NE TN is the second snowiest place in the forum - not so during moderate to strong Nina years. Middle and West TN have had more cold and much more snow during the past three years....Moderate to strong Nina winters in NE TN usually are not great. Re: the November rule, it certainly has significant merit though there are some notable recent exceptions like most wx analogs. I do think that if things cool off early, that is a good sign that we don't enter winter with so much warm air to scour out of the SE and the East Coast...probably also means a good snowpack is building to our north and the delivery mechanism for that cold is active. Those wx patterns tend to repeat during winter. One rule that is interesting is that where it rains during fall tends to also signal where cold will go during winter. I have followed that rule for a long time, and I would guess it is connected to John's guidance in some way. I think I got the "rain rule" from JB. But after significant drought this fall, my confidence in a cold winter was low. Seasonal to slightly BN are what I have for E TN and AN for middle and west re: temps for DJF. I will say that my confidence in having much cold at all is dropping quickly - but that is just a guess. The Nino winters of the 90s had some nada(no snow) winters, and most were lousy IMBY with the exception of some notable one-off snows. The 2000s have seen some better Nino winters. I think the best thing that we can do is to set or exceptions very low, and enjoy what we get. If we are at the New Year with little on the radar so to speak, we need to really dial it back. As for extended LR modeling, the Euro Weeklies have been so bad...I am no longer going to use them as part of discussion for this forum. The GEFS extended have been much better as have the seasonal CANSIPS.
  10. Carvers Gap
    Volcano latitude plays a part, and we certainly don't want an underwater volcano going off again!
  11. Carvers Gap
    The 18z GEFS actually looks decent by Dec 26th - like the old Euro Weeklies. Source regions are AN though. It is pretty textbook Nino - SE trough but more than marginal temps(meaning cold is absent). Again, their should be an MJO correction. That is a good step late in that run. That would probably deliver cold by the second week in January. The 18z operational has high elevation snow on the 25th.....
  12. Carvers Gap
    Anyone north of the TN border seeing snow or rain/snow mix? I see it on radarscope as the system is departing.....
  13. Carvers Gap
    Exactly. I agree with the overall sentiment. But if there is a trough set up over the SE, that makes it much tougher to get severe. During spring when a trough is over the SE, it pretty much ends severe season. Cool and rainy conditions make for poor setups for severe. We need warm conditions with cold fronts charging southeast...like yesterday. I have not talked about a torch. A torch here is often linked to a SER or Bermuda high. I would be surprised to see either. For now just think weather like you might see in England. I think we will see a lot of cloudy days in the 50s with cool overnight temps. But I do agree that we will likely see severe again before we see measurable snow. Just watch for a ridge rolling through like we had last week? When it departs due to a Canadian air mass...severe follows. I don’t remember a lot of severe with zonal flow. We need an amplified pattern with short wavelengths.
  14. Carvers Gap
    That dateline firing "should" allow the MJO to rotate thought some of the good phases(cold). It is one reason I think MJO plots are in error today. Awesome post. Yeah, the jet extension (which I rarely pay attention to...unless someone posts about it) is problematic as is the cold moving eastward towards Alaska(JB posted about that today). And looks highly, highly likely that a Canadian chinook is inbound. That said, volatility usually leads to more volatility....my guess would be is that the volatility coin eventually lands heads-up for us.
  15. Carvers Gap
    Yeah, no winter cancel stuff from me. Other forums have plenty of those folks. Heck some of them are canceling multiple winters to quote one poster. LOL. I think we are 3-4 weeks out(minimum) from anything that even resembles a decent pattern. That said, I do think it is highly plausible that modeling is in extreme error in plotting the MJO. For several of the past winters, modeling just assumes the MJO is going to crash into the COD when in reality it kept on making the turn. I do think modeling completely mistook the current MJO, and was in error in not taking it into 4-6. I believe it is also making the same mistake for 7-2, meaning it is trying to go low amplitude or not at all while in cold phases (the same error it made during warm phases). I would suspect we see a correction in LR modeling during the upcoming week. In some ways, the Euro Weeklies began that adjustment this evening. The consequence of the MJO miscalculation is that modeling brought cold too quickly. Now the consequence is that is maybe muting a significant cold shot just after the New Year. We will see. The 12z GEFS looks great at 500...just don't look at temp anomalies.
  16. Carvers Gap
    Big time can kicking. The Euro Weeklies this evening look slightly better. I would say roughly Jan 10th is when it shows cold showing up. At this point, I am just not sure I trust that model. Might be better to ride w/ global ensembles d1-16 and just climatology for seasonal forecasting. I do think we see a trough set-up shop during the last ten days of December, but with virtually no cold air to fill it.
  17. Carvers Gap
    Just spending some more time looking at the MJO, I believe the Euro Weeklies are in error. They have been wrong with the amplitude of the current reality, and I believe that will likely occur when it hits the cold phases as well. Right now, the amplitude is too low, and I think that will change. The consequences of that error is the model is way to warm for the end of the month and early January.
  18. Carvers Gap
    I will also note that during January there is a 2-3 week window (mid Jan to first week of Feb) where someone in the forum scores regardless of the set-up or lack thereof. I suspect this will be true again, and if so, with more of a focus on eastern areas of the forum. We are seeing hints of that even now...meaning regional placement of snow showers/flurries.
  19. Carvers Gap
    As we wake up this morning to the news from Middle TN, I would like to express my condolences to those communities. I think @PowellVolz said it best earlier this past week, when you see that hatch posted that early, you know it has the potential to be bad. As for the long range, I will keep it short. Weeklies modeling are very likely going to bust both on temps and at 500 for late December and most of January. To clarify (edit), this means that all of those great looks that we have seen for weeks-on-end re: the end of December and early January...are not likely to verify. Though, I do think winter makes its appearance for late January into February, but that idea is less certain now. A back loaded winter fits climatology. However, as others have noted, 97-98 is on the table. Now oddly, two of those warm winters during the late 90s produced two separate heavy snow events - one in Kingsport and one in Johnson City. Neither city saw the same snow amounts as the other. One thing to consider as well, if LR modeling was wrong for weeks on end...it could be wrong now. However, synoptically, the big area of LP in the eastern Pac is the problem. When that feature shows up on winter modeling, it is a huge problem and often degrades very slowly. A massive Chinook is likely to scour all BN temps from Canada. Now that doesn't mean Canadian AN temps equal AN temps here as that air is sometimes jettisoned southward by rainy coastal storms along the US EC. AN Canadian air masses are still cold in TN. For now, I don't see a SER in place, but I don't see air masses which can seed winter storms at lower elevations. It is possible that storms can produce their own cold in the northwest quadrant if the storm is strong enough though. Windows for storms with very marginal temperature profiles are roughly Dec 17th and maybe Christmas Eve. I expect those to have rain in the valleys, but that is a guess. The mountains could do ok. As for when/if cold returns to Canada.....it is going to take several weeks IF the chinook unfolds as modeled. That will erase snowpack and cold. If this was a La Nina winter, I would say the game is up, even this early in the winter. However, El Nino winters have a nasty habit of showing up right as winter seems over. I suspect this is the case. One last note, modeling has been abysmal at recognizing that the MJO is taking the tour. It keeps trying to dive the MJO into the COD. The MJO so far has shown higher amplitude than originally forecast. If that is the case at the moment, modeling may be completely blind to cold showing up later this month.... For now, we will rely on storm track and marginal air masses. That can work, but it ain't easy!
  20. Carvers Gap
    I am gonna pull down that recent post. I am going to pause weather discussion (on my part) until the severe wx goes through. Those videos in the severe thread of the tornado in middle TN are heartbreaking.
  21. Carvers Gap
    Awesome. Thanks for the update. Good luck with your classes! Welcome to the TRI crew.....
  22. Carvers Gap
    And the 0z NAM is back in....
  23. Carvers Gap
    18z GFS has and inland runner - perfect track.
  24. Carvers Gap
    The 18z 12kNAM puts down 5-10” (Kuchera) of snow in the eastern mountains. Looks elevation dependent - WxBell algorithm.
  25. Carvers Gap
    The Euro control has a monster Apps mauler around the 17th. Let’s see if the pieces stay on future runs...has the potential for a phase.
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